Remember when NFTs sold for millions of dollars? 95% of the digital collectibles are now probably worthless.::NFTs had a huge bull run two years ago, with billions of dollars per month in trading volume, but now most have crashed to zero, a study found.

  • Adderbox76@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    correction… always were worthless.

    It’s always been a con game.

    Their so-called “value” was always determined by the ability of the person shilling it to make up bullshit. Literally the definition of a “confidence” game. Same problem as crypto in general. It’s only has value if you have confidence in the person shilling it. The moment that person loses the confidence of their marks, the entire thing crumbles to nothing because it isn’t backed by any real tangible assets.

    • nudny ekscentryk@szmer.info
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      1 year ago

      akshuallllyyyyyyyy, monetary value of anything is derivative to someone else’s willingness to purchase the item

      • Adderbox76@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        untrue.

        Real currency is backed by assets. that used to be the “gold standard”, but has become more ephemeral since the end of the first world war.

        A government issued currency is backed by that government’s infrastructure, taxes, tariffs, etc… basically how powerful that government is on the world stage.

        in contrast, crypto is backed by nothing more than how persuasive the creator is because the creator doesn’t need any assets to create a crypto currency in the first place.

        Heck, in one case, some techbro created a crypto currency, and convinced a bunch of people that it would be stable because he was backing it with ANOTHER crypto currency he literally created for that only purpose.

        And people FELL FOR IT!

        When something can be created out of thin air with no assets needed but a GPU, it’s inherently worthless.

        It’s utter insanity.

      • ram@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        You can use this logic to explain away any other ponzi scheme too.

        • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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          1 year ago

          It’s not really logic, and I don’t think it’s defending anything, it’s just the definition of monetary worth.

          For better or for worse, stuff is always as valuable as people consider it to be. Which may be related to how useful that stuff is, but often is not.

    • hstde@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      So like art. No tangible assets, but the value is derived by the highest bidder.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        The thing with art is that even if the art itself is completely worthless, the materials used are not.

        You can sell a “worthless” painting to be used as firewood.

        Same with digital assets, they can be sold to be used as templates or even to train an AI.

        But a location in some useless database (which is essentially what an NFT is) does not.